Powerful divinities, be they Living Gods or not, had the power to create a vastly powerful race of specialized servitors: angels. Antonio Lopez, the youngest and currently only Living God in existence was one such being. 

As he stared into the eyes of Maion, he began to acquire more and more of the knowledge he needed to have before he could precisely create angels. As the two of them silently gazed at each other, Maion began to observe the potent effects of “Eternal Ascension” on the physique of the vastly powerful deity, and so too did the others, as his ascended attributes were just now beginning to hit the territory of becoming visible to mortal beings. 

The power of one of the signature abilities of the Living Gods was an incredibly mighty one. Because of it, Antonio was already far more powerful than the very moment that he had begun his powerful apotheosis. And as he continued to gaze at Maion, the titanic seraph of life who had been the first and only angel to join the cult created by Alphor, Antonio continued to become more and more lovely and more and unconsciously attractive, even though the quasi-omnipotent being was actually holding back the full effects of his eternally increasing attributes. 

Maion was a powerful seraph who commanded one of the most unbelievably powerful domains, life, but even she was helpless in the face of a being who was perpetually becoming greater and greater. Antonio had already become so beautiful that to merely stand in his presence would cause someone to be affected by him, especially since at the moment the young deity was fully and actively using the small number of unconscious abilities he possessed. 

Antonio was actively copying Maion’s memories and adding them to his own. He was taking every scrap of knowledge she possessed and adding it to a mental database he possessed as a result of “Worldmind”, and utilizing her immense knowledge of life to become a far more thoroughly intelligent and powerful lifeform himself. And Maion was almost enraptured by his gaze, as every passing second he became more staggeringly, distractingly, love-inducingly beautiful. 

His other companions, aside from The Automaton, were also equally affected, even Titania wasn’t immune to the effects of his good looks, which was a hell of an accomplishment since the titan-born possessed a titan’s resilience and beauty. To gaze at him, unprepared, was to run the risk of at least momentarily losing one’s willpower in the face of his supernatural beauty.

My “Eternal Ascension” was working overtime to passively increase all of my attributes but I had to admit that at the moment the attribute with seemingly the biggest boost was my beauty. It was weird having such beauty, since I knew that I was actually consciously holding back the impact of this particular attribute, but ever since I had activated “Emanation” earlier and chosen my beauty it had become a focus of “Eternal Ascension”, which was why it was the first stat I possessed to begin to have real, physical effects on me and those around me.

At the moment I possessed beauty that was leagues ahead of what was possible for humans. I consciously didn’t allow that to bleed over into my physical form, which was why my “human” form was seemingly that of a beautiful but ultimately still mundane man, like that of an A-list actor, but had I felt like using my full beauty I could easily do so and become a paragon of beauty so intense that to see me unprepared was to fall victim to my will. For now though the effects of standing in my presence, for humans, unless I opted not to affect them, would likely only be a difficulty disobeying me while one was close to me or could hear me. 

My companions, even Titania and Maion, struggled to not be distracted by even my more subtle motions. That was because of the unconscious effects of my presence, and because I found it quite fun. I was tempted to go back to Earth and utilize this ability in a number of fun ways, such as by mixing it with my ultra-human charisma and convincing people to do my bidding. That said, what I was doing was important.

I had plans and to do them effectively and efficiently I would need to create my own angelic host. While I could try to do that through trial and error, I had no reason to do that when I possessed both “Worldmind'' and the ability to acquire Maion’s knowledge of the creation of angels. And so for the moment, I was focused on taking her knowledge and adding it to my own, so as to speed up my own ambitious plans.

Maion’s mind was a strange thing to explore in-depth. It was a celestial place, befitting of an angelic entity, but it was also filled with all manner of strange memories, and as I created copies of those memories I sensed her connection to life, to the divine, and to creation itself. 

Her connections to life and to creation resonated within me, since I myself possessed a link to creation, due to one of my modes of transcendence being that of “The Architect”. There was a lot I didn’t understand about these modes of transcendence, but I did know that when I used my abilities to create things and lifeforms it’d be easier for me. 

The more I gazed at Maion the more I learned about her, including how she was created. And as that knowledge filled me, I sought to make use of it. I also, surprisingly, learned how to create other types of beings, some of which were very surprising, from her memories such as both demons and devils. The seraph was surprisingly open-minded, and rather scientifically-minded, and had an academic interest in all forms of life. As I gained more and more of her memories and her knowledge, I swiftly adjusted my plans and made clever accommodations to the ideas I had that incorporated the full range of knowledge I had just gained thanks to the endless lifetimes she had spent studying any and all sorts of biology.

One remarkable aspect of “Eternal Ascension” was how it affected other deific-class abilities. It was because of “Eternal Ascension” that Antonio had the ability to enact the very first step in his plans for Earth, while still located in the strange extra dimensional space where the civilizations devoted to the living gods had been able to store their tributes to their deific overlords. 

The deity was very creative, and unfortunately for anyone who would have opposed him, very open-minded. In the wake of the knowledge he had acquired from Maion about both demons and devils, as well as the dimensions which housed them, Antonio began to rapidly adjust his plans. He was able to react to and incorporate his newfound knowledge swiftly because of “Eternal Ascension” and “Worldmind” and he was both conscious of that and grateful for the two powers. 

Antonio, while still in the depths of the extra-dimensional space he had spent just under an hour inside of, began to utilize “Omnikinesis” at the very height of its incredible power: to create life. In the skies above San Juan, chemical energy, divine energy, biomatter, and aether energy mixed together. As these things mixed together, they were empowered by intentionality and by the potency of a deific mind to create a number of angelic souls. 

The angelic souls, newborn celestial beings created to serve Antonio and enact his machinations, were not the only beings he was busy creating. The streets of San Juan were the next place where the deity’s powers would manifest. 

While in North Carolina the afternoon had just begun, in Puerto Rico the final hour of the morning had instead just begun due to the one-hour time difference between Puerto Rico and North Carolina. On the streets of San Juan nether energy, chemical energy, divine energy, and biomatter began to mix together. This earth-shaking mix, which would normally result in supernatural explosions wherever the distinctive energies mixed and mingled, was instead tempered by the intervention and intentions of a creative, and youthful divinity. 

As it so happened, for creatures of deific levels of power, intention had a lot of weight. Oftentimes the powers such beings possessed had a limited degree of awareness, and so their understanding of the intentions of their wielders could allow them a certain degree of leeway with regards to “Correcting” themselves and ensuring that their wielders intent was obeyed. That was a small part of what was happening in the skies above San Juan and the streets of the city.

You see Antonio did not want to cause supernaturally charged explosions. He wanted to create a small horde of weak, easily manageable demons. And so his “Omnikinesis” power took the knowledge he possessed from Maion and his intentions and mixed the two to do just that. 

The streets of San Juan surrounding the military base known as “Fort McCarrin” became the birthplace of a diminutive horde of tiny monstrosities, weak demons that had a number of terrifying forms, such as supernatural spiders the sizes of dogs, ravens the size of refrigerators, and of nightmarish creatures that had no resemblance to any sort of life forms found on Earth.

The beings proceeded to squabble amongst themselves, due to Antonio’s desires not to make them too empowered or intelligent, and as they did the first soldiers in the base took notice of them and began to report them to their superiors. None of the creatures spawned inside of the military base, because the purpose here wasn’t for them to actually hurt any of the soldiers, but for something else, something far more devious and tricky, to occur.

Meanwhile, in the skies above the city, the angels began to shape themselves. Their souls responded to their wishes, and they began to cease being floating, incorporeal orbs of angelic energy and instead began to take on rough approximations of the human body, but with extra features such as wings and halos. And as they took on those shapes, they also began to descend, so that they could enact the plans that filled their heads and were part of their orders from their master and creator. 

The soldiers watching the carnage unfolding on the streets surrounding the base were not the ones who first noticed the angels. The soldiers who first noticed the angels were men stationed at surveillance stations that tracked activity in the air. Their machines detected the floating, almost spectral presences of beings who radiated ethereal energy, and some of them radioed their superiors reporting their own brand of supernatural weirdness. The superiors in question were the men who first laid their eyes on the angels, as many of the superiors had been on their way to the base’s gates when the angels descended low enough to be seen. Several of the base’s commanders were awestruck by the beauty of the beings, as the angels were all stereotypical depictions of such beings and possessed a supernatural, calming beauty and presence that worked wonders on the men who had spotted them. 

The angels in question all possessed reality-warping magic, and as they began to close in on the surface of San Juan they raised their hands in unison. It was only when they raised their hands that the first guards stationed at the entrances to the military base noticed them. And that was precisely the same instant that the demonic horde of nightmarish beings stopped focusing on each other and turned their malevolent gazes towards the base. The fierce monsters had eerily glowing eyes that burned with a sinister intellect and innate cruelty, and they began to run, crawl, and fly towards the base. 

Their sudden redirection took some of the soldiers aback, causing them to be momentarily stunned, but not all of the soldiers present were left temporarily paralyzed. Some of the soldiers had the wits and reflexes to draw their firearms and begin to fire on the demonic host advancing towards them with a seemingly newfound intelligence and group mind. 

The inhuman sounds of demonic screeching began to fill the streets of San Juan as the gigantic host of demons began to face the combined firepower of several dozen national guardsmen and army soldiers. The acidic blood of the demons began to coat the streets of San Juan, especially as demons that fell were summarily trampled by the rest of the advancing host, causing the streets themselves to begin to crack and break apart thanks to the acid weakening their structural integrity, combined with the weight of the massive, berserk army. That said, the few dozen soldiers stationed at each of the entries into the base were no match for the frighteningly large army of animalistic demons and some of the soldiers began to feel a sudden terror grip their hearts. Thankfully for them, they weren’t alone.

The angels, who had continued their descent this whole time, began to chant beautiful and heavenly words of angelic power. As they did, a white dome descended on the base and completely surrounded the encampment. This white dome landed on the base fast enough for only a few of the demons to slip past it and be summarily gunned down by the skilled and trained soldiers, and the demons who ran headfirst into it were immediately disintegrated by the holy barrier. 

And then the angels landed on the streets of San Juan themselves, behind the demonic host that had attempted to charge into the base. The soldiers were able to watch each of the angels create their own celestial weapons, their hands filling with spectral, white light in the shape of weapons of all sorts. 

Over the course of the next few minutes the human soldiers were able to witness an angelic host proceed to utterly root a demonic one, in a display of skill and melee combat so artistic that it would forever inspire the soldiers who were there that day, as well as eventually go down in history books as the first contact ever made by Antonio’s angelic host and the humans of Earth. 

All the while Antonio was smiling as he gazed at the scene through an invisible, spectral eye created by a relatively simple scrying spell that he himself knew thanks to “Metamagnus”. He was quite proud of himself, and he didn’t even have to hurt anyone, aside from the demonic host he had created for the purpose of being slain by his angelic warriors and the soldiers of the base.